Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, is already inspiring teaching staff across the U.S., just not in the ways he might have hoped.
McMahon, the wife of disgraced WWE mastermind Vince McMahon and a frequent participant in egregious wrestling storylines, is one of the most mind-boggling Trump cabinet picks yet. Before she sets her sights on education policies, TikTok teachers are already considering how to implement the former WWE executive’s ideas.
Content creator @mooreteaches reacted to the news with the one question we were all thinking about: To clothesline, or not to clothesline? With the help of some students, he put together an impressive montage of classic wrestling moves like the chair shot and John Cena’s “You Can’t See Me” gesture, set to Stone Cold Steve Austin’s ring theme.
No kids were hurt in the making of this film because clearly everyone understood the assignment. Fake-out punches, well-performed dropkicks, choreographed jumps — this is just like Saturday Night Smackdown. “You had way too much fun filming this,” one user wrote.
Many commenters discovered McMahon had been picked via @mooreteaches’s TikTok, leaving comments like “Thoughts and chairs,” and “This is how I’m finding out Linda McMahon is going to be Secretary of Education. I just got home from work.”
Mr. Moore, who teaches in Richlands, North Carolina, frequently posts about his classroom, funny tidbits from his students, and what life as an educator is like. Or was like. Now, he knows it’s “Time to lay the smackdown!”
McMahon has little education experience but has been pushing her way into politics since the 2010s. She ran for senate twice and began contributing large amounts of money to Trump’s presidential campaign following defeat.
She served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019 and chaired America First Action, a super PAC that backed Trump’s re-election in 2020. She raised $83 million in 2020 through it, according to CT Mirror. Then, McMahon was made transition team chair in August 2024, after donating $814,600 to Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Her only relevant background is that she served one year on Connecticut’s Board of Education in 2009, according to AP. She claimed she wanted to be a teacher at one point in her life, but that never came to fruition. Her deep pockets and history of Trump loyalism, like most of the president-elect’s choices, were probably compelling reasons to draft her.
Many of Trump’s picks have faced legal issues and allegations, and McMahon is no different. Though often framed as a less-involved bystander in her husband’s WWE drama, she was named in an October 2024 lawsuit that claimed she and other leaders at the company failed to act on knowledge of sexual abuse perpetrated by Melvin Phillips Jr..
The lawsuit followed decades of allegations made against Mr. McMahon, whose exploits and impact on wrestling were explored in a 2024 Netflix docuseries. Linda came out of it largely unscathed, but an attorney representing the McMahons responded to the October suit in USA Today, denying the allegations.
In a saner world, Trump’s cabinet picks would incite confusion and panic. Unfortunately, this is the decision-making we’ve come to expect from a president who operates like a businessman first and foremost — and an erratic one at that.